City Furniture Opening Home In Tamarac

TAMARAC — To drivers, it is a gray fortress looming just east of the Sawgrass Expressway.

To city officials, it is a corporate headquarters coup, a gift from Sunrise.

But to Keith Koenig, it is a new home for City Furniture -- one that can't be finished too soon.

Koenig, vice president of the 12-store retail chain, drove slowly amid the cranes and bulldozers recently, peering at a barn-sized paint patch on the building's northern wall.

"You don't want to have to repaint this building," he said.

First, the building is big. Huge. Enormous. Second, it would delay the move-in.

Come October, City Furniture will leave Sawgrass Corporate Park in Sunrise, its home of seven years, for Tamarac Commerce Park, four miles to the north.

Sam Schwartz, a 22-year resident, sees City Furniture as a boon for Tamarac's tax base. He might even shop there, Schwartz said.

"All the trucks are on the west side of the city where there's ample roadway, so they won't be in the way," he said.

City Furniture's new home, at 660,000 square feet, is triple the size of its Sunrise facility, and has the capacity to grow another 300,000 square feet.

"It's remarkable in the sense that it is very, very big -- about 15 acres under roof," Koenig said. "We're used to seeing big buildings, but we're not used to being inside a building and seeing more than a quarter mile."

The $40 million headquarters and distribution center will also have a showroom, office space, retail center and cafM-i. The site will employ 600 people, and grow to 1,000 workers within five years, Koenig said.

The Koenig brothers considered sites in Coral Springs and Sunrise, but had a few good reasons for landing in Tamarac, Koenig said.

Price. They paid $5 million for four parcels that were just the right size, Koenig said. "We'll have plenty of room to grow here," he said.

Location. Highway visibility and easy access to the Sawgrass Expressway also played a role. "At some point, people are going to drive on the Sawgrass," Koenig said. "They're going to say holy Moses, what is that? And when they need furniture, they're going to consider coming here."

Nice guys. "The city staff wanted to work with us," Koenig said. "Tamarac's been wonderful."

Access to the Sawgrass was key in hooking this big fish, said Community Development Director J. Chris King, who described the building as a skyscraper on its side.

But a willingness to move quickly also helped. "We told them we could get them through the government process faster than any other city," King said. "From the time they submitted site plans to the time they got permits was about 120 days."

In addition, the company was facing $1.4 million in permit fees, but the city waived $600,000 of those fees.

Meanwhile, the company ran into trouble in Sunrise after parking 60 trucks in a lot next to its distribution center last summer. In three days, police wrote 143 tickets at $100 apiece to the company. The parking violated city code, city officials said.

To end the ticketing campaign, City Furniture was forced to move 400 trailers to a lot on U.S. 27 and shuttle them 18 miles one way, Koenig said.

City Furniture will sell its building in Sunrise, Koenig said. Sunrise officials declined to comment.

Koenig, who lives in Plantation, is diplomatic about the company's impending departure from Sunrise. "We enjoyed Sunrise. But they didn't have a site as nice as this."

The company is creating 25 acres of wetlands to mitigate development on the site, which borders the Sawgrass Expressway, just north of Commercial Boulevard and west of Hiatus Road.

In late June, 680 royal palms leaned against each other, waiting to be planted.

The trees, delivered in May from a nursery in Homestead, cost $350,000, Koenig said.

"We really like royal palm trees," he said. "They happen to be very expensive. We handpicked every one."

The royal palms are part of Koenig's master plan. His building, he said, will be a landmark, a place you just can't miss.

"Most people think of a warehouse as a cheap, ugly building," he said. But his will stand out as a place of beauty, he said. "It'll be a real destination."

Koenig and his brother Kevin, company president, began planning the new distribution center in 1998. The groundbreaking came in 1999, with a two-year construction plan.

Planting the trees and paving the parking lot are the last steps before move-in.

"Then it's time to sell the furniture," Koenig said.

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2028.